“The best thing to do with Kuroda at the moment is buy him a set of flights, a holiday to a beach of his choice and say “Don’t come back for a year”. It would be best if the Bank of Japan isn’t acting from here on.”

Japan’s Abenomics are named after prime minister Shinzo Abe.

Two of its three so-called ‘arrows’ – monetary and fiscal stimulus on a massive scale – boosted the Nikkei by nearly 60 per cent in their first year.

The third arrow of structural reform has, it’s claimed, barely begun.

And in the meantime, the BoJ is failing to push inflation anywhere near target.

“What would have happened if we hadn’t had Abenomics? It’s really similar to what happens here with quantitative easing in Europe and the US. It’s the counterfactual as we economists call it – in other words, things would have been much worse.”

“With the trend very much to the downside, there are still concerns that no matter what the Bank of Japan actually tries to do, it will still be struggling, and we are still expecting to see this quarter contract once again.”

If growth does contract, it will be negative for the fifth time in the last nine quarters.